The cyanometer, invented in the 18th century by the Swiss scientist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, had one evanescent purpose: to measure the blueness of the sky.
In 1760, when he was 20 years old, Saussure traveled from his home in Geneva to the base of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps. Saussure, a brilliant student from a wealthy family, had already finished his studies at the Academy of Geneva, where he would soon be made a professor, at just 22 years old.
But at this moment he was free to explore, and he was captivated by the mountain, which had never been climbed—not all the way to its top, 15,774 feet above sea level. The young scientist dreamed of standing at the summit, and he offered a generous reward, of an unspecified amount, to the first person who reached it.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
